rorquals

They are the least-known and in many ways the most unusual of the rorquals.

All rorquals have these slits, which in the Fin number about a hundred.

Like many large rorquals, the fin whale is a cosmopolitan species.

If further research confirms these relationships, it will be necessary to reclassify the rorquals.

About 1860 they turned their hard blue eyes upon the rorquals and put their Viking minds to work.

All other rorquals have just one.

Rorquals are the largest group of baleen whales, with nine species in two genera.

These grooves are less numerous (usually 14-22) than in other rorquals but are fairly wide.

Unlike living rorquals, Plesiobalaenoptera was probably not capable of ram feeding.

Like other rorquals, it has no teeth, but has two rows of baleen plates.

Euro-American whalers were now equipped to hunt faster and more powerful species, such as the rorquals.

Rorquals feed by gulping in water, and then pushing it out through the baleen plates with their tongue.

Gestation in rorquals lasts 11-12 months, so that both mating and birthing occur at the same time of year.

Anthropogenic noise is an increasing concern for all rorquals, which communicate via low-frequency sounds.

The industry continued on a large but declining scale until the 1960s, by which time most of the big rorquals had been hunted beyond economic levels.

When coastal stocks began to dwindle Japan looked to species frequenting deeper waters, such as the rorquals (and others).

Many other fossil rorquals have been described, but all are now considered nomena dubia.

Because rorquals sank when they died, later versions of the exploding harpoon injected air into the carcass to keep it afloat.

Fin whales are more gregarious than other rorquals, and often live in groups of 6-10, although feeding groups may reach up to 100 animals.

Within ten years they had found the means to doom, not only the rorquals, but all surviving great whales in all the oceans of the earth.

Here, during the decades that had almost emptied the other -Not all the hunting of rorquals was done with the newly devised harpoon gun.

Plesiobalaenoptera was similar in appearance to other rorquals, although it had a relatively wider rostrum than other whales.

The rorquals included the largest, swiftest and un- doubtedly the most intelligent of whales.

Balaenopteridae (Rorquals)

Rorquals are slender and streamlined in shape, compared with their relatives the right whales, and most have narrow, elongated flippers.